SORRY, I did not know it was a ‘LIQUID GRENADE’!

When your friend’s gift turns into a bomb! And the airport geeks be like those Greeks have manufactured a perfume grenade!

I explained that it contained only sweet-smelling liquid, and he was like, “Who knows you’re smuggling in a ‘liquid bomb’?

The rest of the drama is in ‘My Khartoum Diary’, a 24-day record of my funny experiences in Sudan.

This also makes a poem ‘My Liquid Grenade’ in my upcoming ‘poetography’ entiled ‘BEING TRAVELSOME’: From 1989 To 2019′, a partly poetry and prose narration of my Liberation Activism for 30 years.

‘My Khartoum Diary’ aside, the poetic half of this book kicks off with my Red Army (village school) mobilization song of 1990, entitled: IT WILL SIT INTO TWO! And its prophetic chorus (in Dinka) goes:

“This country of ours, we will negotiate it through the barrel of AK47, If it fails, it will split into two. We will negotiate it through the barrel of a pen, if it fails, it will split into two…”!

The next poem in the first chapter was our live presentation to Pope John Paul II in Gulu in February 1993. I was one of the 5 bare-footed, rib-protruding, half-naked, boy activists that travelled from Palotaka (Eastern Equatoria) to northern Uganda with a handwritten petition and a tear-shedding song, both reporting the behaviour of Antonov and Omar Al Bashir in our Grang-held territories.

It has this chorus: “We Are The Poorest Ones, Forgotten Ones (X2). We Are Children Of Sudan (X2). We Are Children Of South Sudan!”

Take note, the last line does not say ‘SouthERN Sudan’, so the idea of our independence ran in our minds against John Garang’s SPLM vision of liberating the Sudan wholesale.

“BEING TRAVELSOME: From 1989 To 2019” will be released in January next year, to mark the 3 decades of my Activism for Freedom in the Sudan and South Sudan.

This grenade thingy is important for introducing my first autobiography book today because it reminds me of the wooden grenade (real) that I had ‘borrowed’ from some SPLA arsenal storekeeper and hid in the bottom of my sorghum-nylon hand-crafted bag for 3 years in Palotaka…in case we were attacked in our sleep!

YOU’RE WELL? COME!

Dear Ready Reader, Since it is my belief that a good reader is a good leader, I cordially welcome and encourage you to explore my literal mind and exploit my literary mine in this poetic wordware. I hope you are not that pessimistic critic – not a somber leader but a sober reader – who is ever ready to give me their unique critiques on my Pennique techniques; just as my previous readers had with me as their text collector (or corrector and connector) of news, views, interviews, reviews, overviews, previews, purviews, and all the free views expressed in the process of my rioting by writing when my nascent nation is trudging through her era of error. To be Pennically jealous and Penniquely zealous, just as I would not want Juba defined and designed with Sheik Zubeir’s architecture, I would not want my pages pasted and passages plastered with Shakespeare’s literature; and neither would I want my messages massaged with Achebe’s achievers flavours, nor my torturous tales tailored with Tutuola's tutorials. Yet again, if this is not understandable – lo, we go!— (From Preface to my poetry book (manuscript, 'The Black Christs of Africa'

Jon Pen

CALLOUS CALLOUT? Well, here is another exercise of excuse. As I put it in one of my blogs on our Independence Day: Too much culture of leading with too little culture of reading is eminently going to murder the ‘baby nation’ at its infancy. During the times of conflict as such, two features are wrongly prominent; rude war literature and crude war economy. Either of these always delays, and almost slays this blog and 'The Black Christs of Africa'— the book and its sequels. Lo we go…! (From Preface to 'The Black Christs of Africa' (manuscript)

Pennavatar

However, what I found out during my six years of a hide-and-seek game with a 'real publisher of books' was but a real publisher of names; of names of those who have already published books. Since I did not have any name, yet, to be published and sold, I just landed on an e-printer and a printer handy, to me, the real publisher of words. In the truest sense of these words, this (Master Text Collector Ltd.) is the real publisher of books; one who looks at the book of a writer and not the writer of a book. Therefore, if I were the president of a ‘Republic of Literatia’, I would make that a decree to publish not the literary pedigree but the literary degree in a very mannered script of every manuscript. Lo, we go…!

Textleak

ABOUTLEAKS:
Of my style as from my works of poetry:

"Well, there is one fact I have to admit from their cynicism, but omit from my Pennicism and commit to our criticism as we trudge along in this world of invention. The fact is, if my work is unconventional, then it is because I did not attend that Literary Convention hosted by patrons and matrons of an ‘Art Convent’– in case of any – during those days when God created the World by the Word in the ‘Universe of Artitecture’. So spare me this deliberate circumvention for my own literary convention conducted in a series of serious conferences only within the circumference of my upper room, call it, Head Hall. Lo, we go…!
So here is another exercise of excuse. As I put it in one of my blogs on our Independence Day: Too much culture of leading with too little culture of reading is eminently going to murder the ‘baby nation’ at its infancy. During the times of conflict as such, two features are wrongly prominent; rude war literature and crude war economy. Either of these always delays, and almost slays, The Black Christs of Africa— this book and its sequels. Lo we go…! "